It’s funny the moments the brain chooses to take snapshots of and file away.
Sometimes I find I can’t remember much but fuzzy generalities from trips or places that are extremely important to me, yet there will be scenes frozen in my mind which seem to be of no consequence at all.
Why would I have such a vivid memory of sitting in the RV in the parking lot of a strip mall, waiting on Sharaun to buy storage baskets at some craft chain?
Of cooking ramen over the RV stove, parked in the dirt on a roadside pull-out on the forested Pacific Coast Highway, the whole rig pitched un-level enough that you could see it in the water in the pot?
Tarantulas crossing the desert blacktop, perpendicular to traffic, in little stuttering bundles of legs.
Meeting a man scavenging along the lakeshore, my family and him the only souls in sight, who walked over to tell me, “God loves you,” and offer me the unopened package of latex gloves he’d come upon because, “I figured you could use them in the motorhome.”
Choking on the smoke of a failed attempt at an evening campfire in Kings Canyon National Park, Gators football on the radio in the background.
Refilling the fresh water tank with 50ft of hose and a hand-held “water bandit” from the only accessible spigot in a campground, which was on the bathhouse and not threaded, designed to discourage said usage but of no matter to our need for water.
Pulling over near the beach in California to use white duct tape to hold the strip of plastic molding around the wheel cutout while bonding cured, after scraping and detaching said molding on a post exiting a campground. Forgetting, then, to ever remove the duct tape and now having it as a permanent vehicle fixture.
So many more. Little vignettes stuck in my head. Love them.
Also written on this day...
- fix some sprinklers before going into work - 2010
- feelin' breezy - 2008
- weekend writing - 2007
- sucking ice - 2004